georgia summers are so heavy and hot
that breathing is a chore,
which is something i never remember until fall.
four months of bleached bones and choking on gravel
spit me gasping and exhausted into every mid-september,
when the sudden lightness in the air is so hard to trust
that i flood my own lungs
and set fires in my throat because
i don't know how to live
when things are easy.

it has been one hundred and ninety six weeks
since the last time i used ****** and
one hundred and thirty days since my last cigarette and
twelve hours since my last drink.
it has been fifty seven months since i last kissed you,
but when i think about relapse,
all i can taste is your tongue.
i told you i never loved you
half as much as i loved drugs, but
you've been dead almost five years
and i'm still writing eulogies.
i don't even know if i miss you.
maybe mourning is just easier to swallow
than the truth,
that i have felt this way ever since i can remember,
that maybe i have never been able to breathe
because maybe i was not built to last.

so far i've killed every plant i've ever grown,
but the basil and green onions i planted this summer are still thriving
somehow.
i meant to abandon them when i moved,
but my roommate brought them in amongst my things and
in my last run to pick up odds and ends,
i put them in my car.
i still don't know why.
i haven't watered those plants in weeks but
i did bring them outside and it has rained enough this month
that somehow they're still growing,
some sort of proof that something living
can survive being mine.
maybe so can i.
maybe if i **** up all the sunlight i can find
and fight for every scrap of survival,
drink up all the water i can grab to sustain me through the dry days,
maybe i can also be okay.
maybe i can thrive.

i have not yet learned how to want to live,
but i am still alive,
and i guess that means
there's time.

your hand in mine is sometimes
the only thing keeping
my head above water,
but if my grief is ever heavier
than you can hold,
i forgive you in advance
for letting go.

you left flowers on my counter
in a cup.
wildflowers. like daisies,
but with thicker roots
and heartier stems.
beautiful and built to thrive.

you left flowers on my counter,
told me you loved me,
and left me sleepy and hopeful
and standing in the doorway.
you did not stop to check the lock.
i think you are the bravest person
i have ever met.

i was afraid i would do something crazy,
like shoot myself in the head
or call you
(which is sort of the same thing
only slower)

so i drove to the mountains
and climbed barefoot to the top
and watched the sunset
with my feet in the dirt.

there is blood in the streets
and dripping from the slick soles of shoes
of the smiling old men
who sell souls and buy lunch,
who never see and who
never stop smiling.

there is blood in the streets
and flaking like rust from the walls
of the banks and the prisons,
staining the palms
of the rich and the ruthless.

there is blood in the streets,
a graveyard full of my friends
and a holy battlefield
where kids with bandanas and baseball bats
fight for their lives and for those
whose guts stain the whole city red.

there is blood in the streets,
and the rich white men build themselves bridges
so far above the red running river
that they can call this peace.

there is blood in the streets,
but all you can see is a trash can on fire
and the scattered shards of shattered glass.

every night you take
your illness up to bed,
the only lover you ever learned to trust.
you open strange eyes on strange mornings
in a body that is not yours,
in a place you don't remember.
you ought to know better.
count all the tiles on the ceiling
thirteen times
and press your teeth
into your tongue.
repeat until you trust yourself
not to say something odd.
it is hard to love a woman
who speaks with spirits over breakfast.

cheap ***** goes down easier
when you're already drunk,
so **** it up and
swallow so much poison
you forget how much
you hate it here.
dance with everyone who asks
and pretend their hands
don't burn your hips.
train your lips to smile
and you'll look just like the living.
it is hard to love a ghost.

a little perfume at your collarbones,
and your lover won't ever notice
the scent of melancholy
that lingers in your hair like smoke.
your red lips will distract
from the disembodied screaming
that tends to tumble at your heels.
you can hide dark circles
under your eyes
by lying face-down on the floor
until you remember how to be fun.

the night is for lovers,
but the stars burn your eyes
and your rusted mannequin body
does not remember how to dance.
the night is for falling,
and police lights,
and crying in a waffle house parking lot.
smile like you still have a chance.

the night knows your secrets,
but if you are lucky,
she just might pretend to forget.

i had this dream
where i was locked in a glass room,
gasping for air with
thick fingers wrapped tight
around my throat.
the streets outside were crowded,
people stared and screamed,
but no one ever tried
to break the glass.

that's how monday mornings feel,
walking down halls filled with
well-meaning people who would
help if they knew how.
i am a butterfly pinned,
broken and bright and iridescent,
and you cannot look away but
what can you do?
i cannot ask anyone to stick
shattered shards into their skin
just to step between me
and an oncoming train.
i want no one else's knuckles
broken for my safety.
sometimes the wolves
outsmart the shepherds,
and i am softer than i seem
and not built to fight forever.

in my dream,
i kicked my boot bottom-first
through the glass
and sprinted a path through the crowd,
****** and breathless and bruised
and alive because
i know when to stop waiting for
things to make sense.
sometimes the monsters are
stronger than you'd hoped
and some things are not worth
holding onto.

i stopped seeing the shame in
running for my life
the day i ran out of other options.

the moon is a lesbian,
which i know because she has
kissed every inch of my body
more often than any lover
i've ever known.

i have watched the way
she kisses the ocean
and guides her gently home,
have seen her face reflected with love
in the ever-changing sparkling surface of the sea,
and i don't know any other word
to describe a love like that.

the day we smoked a joint in the woods
and then walked eight miles in the rain
to gas station coffee,
we passed two other gas stations on the way,
but you were holding my hand and
i didn't want it to stop.
you said
"you're beautiful"
and i said
~~~~
because you were the most remarkable
person i had ever seen,
leaned up against the hood of a stranger's car,
smoking a cigarette like a lesbian james dean.

you'd call yourself
"lesbian" sixteen times before breakfast
until it stopped sounding like venom
and started to sound like a prayer,
because how could i ever look at
love like this and feel anything
but holy?
my new church was the woods
by the river,
and i learned to worship
at the altar of your body.
you took me in your arms and you said,
"baby,
you're beautiful,"
and i told you i loved you
because beautiful had never
meant anything to me
except that i had something
people could take.
i heard "beautiful" from your lips and it sounded
like a blessing.

the moon is a lesbian because
she knows how to love without taking,
i have scarcely loved a man
who has learned how to love without taking,
that is not to say that no man
can love without taking,
but it is a skill that is learned
through a grief
that i have shared with every
queer woman i have ever met.

when you kissed me in the attic,
it was not the first time
i had been kissed,
but it was the first time that a touch
felt like a gift and not a punishment,
and it was the first time i understood
why people write love songs.
i wanted to write you a love song,
but after a lifetime afraid of my own voice,
all i could sing you were hymns.
not because i had made you an idol,
but because your hands on my body
made me feel clean for the first time.

the moon is a lesbian because
the night i stumbled out of
the apartment of the man
who only loved me when
he thought he could keep me,
blood on my lips and nowhere to go,
the moon kissed my fingertips
and she said,
"baby,
what took you so long?
welcome home."

“be safe,
get some rest,
text me when you get home.”

i used to love a boy
who never lived to be a man.
i was fourteen years old,
in a psychiatric hospital
after swallowing so many
of my mother's pills
that i couldn't remember
her name.
he told me i'd been crying
and rocking back and forth
for two days.
i told him i was cold.
he gave me his sweater.

“be safe,
get some rest,
text me when you get home.”
things i say so often
they have become more incantation
than conversation,
a protective spell rubbed
river-rock smooth
by worried hands.

i say,
“you look cold, take my jacket.”
i say,
“have you eaten today?”
i say,
“here, drink some water.”

i do not say what i am thinking,
which is,
“baby,
the sharks are circling again,
where is the blood
coming from this time?”

because when i said,
“i love you, stop dying,”
he said,
“go home.”
i said,
“i already am,”
so he killed a fifth of tequila,
cut us both with the bottle,
and passed out in the bathtub.

so when i see the dark fingers
that tug at your bones,
i will not ask you any questions
i don't think you can answer.
tonight,
we will only talk about things
we have words for,
and if that means
all we talk about
is stars,
then i will spend
a lifetime of tuesday nights
talking to you about stars.
and if staying alive means
going away,
then i will buy you a bus ticket
and tell you to never look back.
dragons were not meant to live
pinned under glass and i would
never ask you to be
anything else
to fit comfortably.

and the last day i see you,
i will not say goodbye.
i will not tell you i'm afraid,
i will tell you i love you,
crank up the stereo,
punk rock screaming
at a purple sky,
and i will drive you home
one last time.